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Saturday, July 30, 2011

2 interesting facts that are completely unrelated to the rest of this post:

147 days til Christmas. People you know would like a necklace for Christmas this year.

I can see your neck right now and it looks pretty boring.

"The baby's moving into my craft room" CLEARANCE SALE

Junior shows up in 2 weeks and his new little baby nook takes over half of my craft room (sigh). So I need to clear out some old inventory. For anyone is interested, I'm selling some necklaces for around half price. ($3 flat shipping no matter how many you want, and if you live in K'ville, just email me and we'll just do the purchase off line with no shipping costs.)

Here are some examples of the things for sale:

Wire Wrapped Tree Necklaces. $12 each (regularly $26) and there are 8 of them in all different colors, some in silver wire, some in copper.

and Crackled Glass Necklaces. $4 each (Regularly $8). There are 4 different styles. Perfect for you or that niece of yours who you need a Christmas present for.

High #2: Another high that I can't believe I've never mentioned is steak night.

Every Saturday night Medman and I have steak night. I know some couples have a weekly date night where they go out, but since there aren't any restaurants in town with food that can hold a candle to our steaks and adding babysitting costs to dinner costs starts to get pricey, we just do our date at home. We toss the children in the general direction of their beds, cook up a mound of potatoes, a nice juicy steak and a glass of wine and enjoy a movie. It is consistently a highlight of our week. We start talking about it around Thursday. Don't invite us to do anything on Saturday nights. It's steak night. No, we don't want to eat steak on another night. What? You want us to come somewhere and you will give us $5000? Um, maybe. But we'll have to talk about it before we can give you a definite answer. It's steak night.

Lows:

Low #1: My body is able to handle pregnancy until around 5:00 every day. Not gracefully, mind you, but I deal with it. But come dinner time everything deteriorates. Heartburn, back pain, hip pain, exhaustion, baby jabbing sensitive body parts. And then I get crabby. Which pisses me off.

Not that it's surprising that I feel this way. I'm beginning to suspect that the human body was never SUPPOSED to do this. And don't ANY of you DARE tell me about how glorious and miraculous pregnancy is. I will kick you. It will take me a couple minutes to waddle over to you and I can't lift my leg higher than your shin, but I will kick your shin hard. My swollen ankles are like little wrecking balls.

You see, being 9 months pregnant I have 14 extra lbs (between baby, amniotic fluid, placenta and uterus) shoved into my abdomen. (No picture here. You're welcome.) And that's just baby stuff. That leaves an equivalent amount of weight gain as an intrinsic part of ME. Did you know I have FOUR POUNDS of extra blood right now? Ew.

The kicker is that before the baby showed up my abdomen was already full of my own essential organs. And it was full. I didn't have gaping caves in there just waiting for some sort of parasitic life form to fill up. And my organs worked fine. Now, not so much. My stomach is too squished to allow food to be digested properly so it keeps trying to send it all back up the way it came. My bladder is pummeled regularly and my intestines are all squished. If I had any idea what my spleen did, I'm sure I'd see evidence that it too was having trouble working in the newly crowded neighborhood.

Low #2: It's HOT. Miserably hot. Here's today's outlook:

I know, the whole country's hot. But on Friday we were looking at a heat index map and lo and behold the highest heat index in the country was right where we live. Ugg. There are 2 theories for why this heat is happening.

The first involves some sort of meteorology. Something about an El Nino event earlier this year. Blah blah blah.

The second, which I find more likely, is that the heat generated by my body attempting to grow a child is so intense that it is affecting the 13 states around me. Sorry Midwest.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

I was chatting with my big sister last night and mentioned that my kids were weird in some way or another and she answered, "Weird is good." And so I started thinking. It's true. Weird is good. Besides the annoying fact that I type it wrong EVERY time (my brain tries to jump in and shout "e THEN i" but my fingers just refuse to obey...) weirdness brings a lot of happiness around here.

My kids can argue with the best of them. I thought it might take longer than 2 years before my kiddos mastered the "No it's not!" "Yes it is!" fight, but Belle has a real flare for negating. I don't think she even needs to know what a sentence means to negate it.

D, sharing info he gleaned from a Magic Treehouse book, could say to me, "After the San Francisco earthquake, fires burned in the city for THREE DAYS!"

And Belle, who I'd swear wasn't even paying attention, will say offhandedly, "No, the fires did NOT burn for three days."

"Yes, Belle, they DID burn for three days."
"No, they did NOT burn for three days."

And in the most cliche way possible those two lines are repeated with increasing passion for...well, I don't know how long because I'm the one who cracks first.

Me: "Ahh! Belle, stop! D is right. They did burn for three days, just trust D. You don't even know how long three days is."

Belle: "Yes I do."
D: "No you don't"
Belle: "Yes I do."
Me: "Why does this car not have some sort of soundproof divider between me and you guys?"

But, they get on remarkably well when they are doing SOMETHING WEIRD.

Like laying under either end of a blanket and sipping water.

Yeah, this went on for a blissful 20 minutes or so. One of them would announce, "Drink time!" and they'd both drink water. Then someone would say, "Cups down time!" and both would spend 30 seconds trying to get their cups onto the bookshelf without getting up. Then they'd giggle and wiggle their feet until, "Drink time!" And it was cute and happy. But a little weird.

Or when they got their hampers set up between the couch and coffee table on laundry day and set up their matching Poingo books.

Happy as clams while their Poingo pens hollered out letter names. Again, very cute but a bit weird.

Now, I just have to pray that they keep finding weird things to do all day every day. It would be heaven around here!

PS - Yes, I typed it wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME the whole way through this post. You should all be glad for spell check.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Jennifer from Life, Crafts and Whatever hosts this little party every week where people can link up their highs and lows. And I think it's a great idea. Usually as I stop to think back on the week I'm surprised at all the good stuff that went on and had almost forgotten about.

The low are easier to remember, of course. The crappy part is that the real lows are often sort of embarrassing to write about. I stay at home with the kids which means that usually the low point of my week involves me acting like a child in response to one of the thousand interruptions/irritations/messes/insults from those two opinionated, self-absorbed yet still irresistibly lovable children that I spend all of my time with.

Like when I bellow at them both, "THE NEXT PERSON WHO DOES NOT SPEAK IN A NICE VOICE IS GETTING PUT IN TIMEOUT TIL AUGUST!" Classy stuff like that.

Or when I force D to clean his room because "Really, sweetie, you'll feel better if you just pick it up a bit...No, I can't help you, I'm busy balancing more dishes on the kitchen counter that I don't want to clean."

SO, in an effort to remember the fun things of this week and not dwell on my own mothering inadequacies, here are the Highs and Lows:

Highs:

We had a week remarkably free from obligations and at least one morning that I remember was not unbearably hot. Which means we got to go and enjoy some time outside at the park with friends and had TWO trips to the library.

I reached 35 weeks in this pregnancy! That's a big milestone here in rural Missouri because it means that if baby boy decides to show up early, he can be born here in town. Any earlier than 35 weeks and the babe gets sent off to the big city so he can be properly cared for.

The aforementioned Jennifer is doing a giveaway from my Etsy shop! It's been fun to see people enter to win something from me.

Sewing projects gone RIGHT! It's very exciting that the last bunch of things (not counting the half finished, oddly lumpy shirt I tried to make Belle) that I've sewn have worked well! 3 of them are maternity shirts fashioned from humongous men's t-shirts. (Uh, the shirts themselves were humongous. I did not take them from humongous men.) And I made a white coat for D so he can look more like his dad when he plays doctor:

From daddy's old student white coat...

...to a little boy sized one. No, I didn't threaten him on his life to smile. Why do you ask?

New cell phones! Hubby and I have joined the rest of the country and are addicted to proud owners of fancy smart phones. Yes, years after everyone else, we can finally play Angry Birds. In fact that's what we spent the weekend doing. Playing Angry Birds.

Lows:

I actually did waste pretty much the entire weekend playing Angry Birds. I hate those smug little pigs.

Every day except that one morning was unbearably hot. Heat index of 110? Is that really necessary? Especially as my body seems to be literally trying to cook the bun in my oven.

Belle got some sort of little fever thing on Friday. This fever thing caused sleep problems. Medman will probably list this as a high (and at the time she was pretty cute) but she was awake from 9:30 to 11:30 pm! A big chunk of that time she spent cuddled with her dad in the rocking chair chatting him up about butterflies and her stuffed bunny (thus the high from her dad.) He'd had a long week and hadn't seen her much. And she was really turning on the charm to get to stay up with us at such an exotic time. BUT, the problem was that it was just one of the many nights of bad sleep for me this week. Between sick kids, babies in utero who like to cause all sorts of discomforts and husbands who are interesting to talk to when they get home late I'm feeling a bit sleep deprived.

Tornado sirens DURING NAP TIME. NUTHIN' should mess with nap time. Not even a tornado. I was seriously considering going outside to force the approaching thunderstorm away by sheer angry momma-bear will, but then the tornado sirens went off and I satisfied myself with shaking my fist threateningly at it then tucking my tail to run and drag kids off to the basement.

I made cookies that were gross. The kids helped and the recipe was simple, but the cookies were gross. Medman took a bite then dropped the rest back onto the cooling rack, Belle flat out refused to taste one and D, when asked if he liked them replied evasively, "Well, I ate one."

I threw the cookies out and apparently broke my son's heart who sobbed that he had "actually liked them and really, really, really didn't want them thrown away!" Bad cook? Check. Bad mom? Check.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

For instance, take this quote which I want to hang in the new nursery:

“It is not a slight thing when those so fresh from God love us.” ~ Dickens

"Fresh" is the perfect word for a newborn, isn't it?

But since becoming a parent I have discovered that there are words in my house that have utterly lost their meaning. Or worse had their meaning morph into the opposite of what it should be.

For instance:

"Help"

[help] - verb
1. to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task; render assistance to; aid; assist; to make easier

My kids often offer to "help" me. Or (worse) I ask them to "help" me. But whatever happens around here certainly doesn't fit with the definition above.

Belle asked if she could help with the laundry. She's two, so I automatically adjust the meaning of "help" from "render assistance" to "be a talkative companion who will be a hindrance." Already a significant downgrade from the real meaning.

But, in an effort to, I dunno, be a good mom or something, I have her "help" me toss clothes into the washer and dryer. So there, I was "helped." I mean, it at least tripled the length of the task but maybe I didn't have to bend over as much. Maybe.

But the real "help" she gave I discovered an hour later. You see, in the dryer was one of the TWO pairs of maternity pants that fit me (the other was now soaking wet in the washer) and I needed them so we could leave the house. But when it came time to leave and I went down to the dryer to grab my pants, I discovered the entire load sopping wet and freezing cold.

What the ?????

Yes, after I had set the dryer to "Medium heat" my dear daughter had turned the knob to "Air fluff." Air fluff?!? I didn't even know that setting existed. Someone please tell me why my DRYER needs a setting that does not dry anything. I think it might have made them colder. And more wet.

So thank you, sweet girl, for your "help" which caused me to say many not-so-sweet words and then dig frantically through my closet for something to wear. Next time just kick me in the head or something instead.

And I'm so sorry to all the people at the doctor's office who had to see me in those other pants. I did try to retire them last trimester.

"Careful"

[careful] - adjective
1.cautious in one's actions.

"Careful" is another problem word.

Sometimes I use it at the right time, but it doesn't mean what I want it to mean:
I find my self saying hourly,
"Careful! Don't stare down at your own feet while you run!",
"Careful! Don't slide down the stairs in the laundry basket!",
"Careful! Don't slide down the stairs on a couch cushion!",
"Careful! Don't slide down the stairs on the folded up teepee tent!",
"BE CAREFUL!!!"

And I know that the word does not mean to them what it should. I know that in their neanderthal little minds "careful" means "We must be doing something awesome! Keep going before the shrew hobbles over here and physically stops us!"

And rushing to slide down a folded up teepee on the stairs is NOT the definition of "careful."

Sometimes I use it too late and it's almost cruel:
If Belle tries to climb over the coffee table and slips off the side, I hear the big crash and yell, "Belle! Be careful!!!"

Nice. Why don't I just kick her while she's stuck down there between the coffee table and the couch? Had she mastered sarcasm yet, I'm sure she would come up with some scathing retort. But instead she just looks at me with those big eyes devastated by my betrayal and starts to cry.

Sometimes it just backfires entirely:
But if I happen to see Belle right before she falls off the coffee table, I yelp, "BELLE! BE CAREFUL!" so that the child will focus on what she's doing.

Of course my screaming has the opposite effect and she whips around to look at me all wide-eyed and I can see her trying to puzzle out what is going on since I usually say that when she's already in pain.

And that makes her fall.

I clear things right up by saying, "Honey! That's why I told you to be careful!"

And the sheer incomprehensibility of the English language makes her start crying again.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

I'm slightly suspicious that Belle is actually a 25 year old undercover in a 2 year old's body.

Exhibit A: She already understands the birds and the bees.

D reading the title of a photo album: "What are little boys made of?"
Belle (very matter-of-factly): Mommy and Daddy!

Exhibit B: I think she reads my blog.

We went blueberry picking again. (Yes, we have almost an addiction to it...) and Belle got her own bucket again. I restrained from making any snide comments to her before we got to the berries. But she walked right up to the bush, picked a beautiful one and STUCK IT IN HER BUCKET! And then I swear she looked at me like, "How you like them berries?"

Permission

Belle (looking up from the train table at the library frantically): "OK to poop in the library?!?"

Introversion

I've mentioned my husband's and my introvertedness in other posts. I'm beginning to think that our kids are slanted in the same way.

Exhibit A: It's my party, I'll flee if I want to

Even though fun was being had by all, half way through D's birthday party last weekend he looked at his dad and said cheerfully, "I think I'd like to go to my room and play by myself for a little while."

Exhibit B: Rejecting Extrovertism.

There's also this children's song that is clearly intended to brainwash our young into idealizing extroverts. I know you've all heard it:

The more we get together, together, togetherThe more we get together the happier we'll be. For your friends are my friends and my friends are your friendsThe more we get together the happier we'll be.

What a load of crap. I'm exhausted just listening to the song. I prefer Belle's version. She'll belt it out anywhere including the aisles at Walmart:

For YOUR friends are YOUR friends and MY friends are MY friends

And she just continues repeating that line ad nausem while I giggle.

Projectile Motion

D (calling to me from his bathroom): Can I stand on the SIDE of the potty to pee?
Me: Sure, as long as you don't overshoot it.
(long pause)
D: What does 'overshoot' mean?
Me: To send your pee shooting over the potty and hit it into the wall.
D (excited): OH! That's exactly what I just did!

Recently I ran across a Lighter Than Air Peasant Top Tutorial by My Gramma Said which uses lettuce edging and I LOVE it. It’s a great tutorial and I was able to whip up two maternity shirts from some Men’s XL tees which are my new favorite shirts. (5 weeks from the end of my pregnancy I’m NOT driving 100 miles to the nearest mall for maternity clothes, but the old ones are not doing a stellar job of covering my baby #4 belly! And there ain’t NOBODY who wants to see the bottom of a pasty white belly hanging out of a shirt.)

Then, while cleaning out my sewing area to make room for baby #4, I discovered a pink onesie I’d bought ages ago at Dollar Tree. It was the right size for my girly, but she just turned two and I’m liking her more in t-shirts than onesies. So I thought, “Lettuce edged tee! Perfect!”

I just cut off the sleeves and bottom...

...ruffled the edges...

...and viola!

She seems to like it.

And with a total price of $1 for the onesie and 20 minutes of work time, I like it too.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Yes, I'm bad at posting pictures. I know it. And no, I don't have any pictures posted on facebook either. Suck it up. 6 weeks and we'll have a flopsy newborn around and then the camera will (probably) be used more.

But here's some random cute ones:

Mini Mozart. Even channeling the hair.

Anything better than a good friend, a blanket and a stack of Dr. Seuss books?

Fun at the park.

Maybe not QUITE as cool as she thinks she is...

That's better.

And finally, two faces too good not to post. Your welcome, future-versions of my children!

Monday, July 4, 2011

My highs and lows this week are all sort of jumbled up, so I'm not going to even try to formulate a list.

The week was pretty much defined by the huge storm we had on Sunday. Partly because of the low of getting almost no sleep all night (part pregnancy discomfort, part storm, part sleeping in a hot house afterwards with windows open and lots of thunder and lightning continuing for hours...) but mostly because of the lack of power that we had for the next two days.

So, 48 without power, a high or low? Well, having to throw out a bunch of food from the fridge was a low. But now having a nice clean fridge is sort of a high. And getting NO COFFEE for 2 days was a definite LOW. But having an excuse to put off the vacuuming and laundry for two days, a high. Of course, since I should have done laundry over the weekend before the storm and had been playing a sort of can-we-go-a-few-more-days-before-washing-underwear Russian Roulette with all of our closets, by the time Wednesday rolled around the laundry situation was a definite low.

Kids getting to play with their own personal flashlights for days? Definite high. I'm not sure why we ever buy them real toys. Flashlights, kitchen utensils and a blanket for a fort and they're in heaven.

I feel like I should say that two days with no tv, computer and limited phones (my cell was almost dead when the storm hit and could only be charged when we were driving somewhere. My three minute trips around town don't do much for charging....) was a low. That somehow it should have been frustrating. But actually it was a high. It was pretty freeing to have all sorts of 'obligations' I put on myself lifted. Besides the minor irritation of CONTINUALLY trying to do things that required power, it was nice to slow down, hang out with the kids or sit on the back porch and chill.

And the weather those two days was a definite high. It was cool and cloudy. LOVELY. If we hadn't gotten power back by Thursday I would have left the state and headed north until I found snow. I think the heat index was 105 on Thursday. But the two days we were air-conditioningless were beautiful.

So with the power outage for 2 days then another couple days of getting Mt. Laundry done and all the other tasks that had needed attention, the house is just starting to feel back to normal. All in all, though, I'd go with the highs beating the lows.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Did you know there can be hurricanes in the middle of the Midwest? I didn't - before Sunday. But I've seen those idiotic intrepid reporters standing in Florida when a hurricane hits and that is exactly what it looked like out my window on Sunday night. Well, minus the reporter. At least there wasn't one closer to my house than the end of the driveway. I couldn't see past there.

I looked up hurricane wind speed and to get from a Tropical Storm to a Hurricane you have to hit 74 mph. Well, the news (before we lost power) says that there were 70 mph gusts in our thunderstorm, but I'm fairly certain I saw one get up to 74 mph. And ignoring all those pesky requirements of a hurricane "originating near the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea", yada yada, the third definition was "Something resembling a hurricane in force or speed." So we're declaring it at CATEGORY ONE HURRICANE!

Around midnight Sunday night we were awakened by some serious thunder and lightning and since we knew a storm was on its way, we headed downstairs to check the radar and see if there were any annoying middle-of-the-night tornadoes coming. (Side note: I'm still a Colorado girl. Thunderstorms should come reliably between 3pm and 5pm on hot summer days. They should NOT be allowed to build up across Kansas all day and hit my house in the middle of the night. That just makes them creepy.)

We didn't make it to the computer right away because we were transfixed by the scene out our big front window. Or maybe the lack of scene. We couldn't barely see the street and the big tree in our front yard was whipping around like its trunk was made of jello. And we said clever things like, "Wow! That's a lot of wind!" and, "Woah! Look at that rain!"

But then the storm rolled its eyes at us and kicked itself up a notch. Or maybe a dozen notches. And we flinched. Literally. We both pulled back from the window and said, "OK! Time to get the kids downstairs!"

So we chilled down in the basement while the kids had a blast being up in the middle of the nights playing with some light-saber type flashlights. And then kept the flashlights out for the next 48 hours until power was restored.

There's something so awe-inspiring about a huge storm. Both while it's going on and the next morning when you can see all the damage it did. Downright intimidating.

We, luckily had very little damage. A big branch or two off our trees. But quite a few of our neighbors had more.

Downed fences

Old, huge trees knocked down

And massive amounts of branches down clogging our creek and causing serious flooding.

And our neighbors new trampoline made a bid for freedom during the storm. It managed to hop its own fence but was tripped up on the neighbor's. Then it was mangled.

My kids are sad about the trampoline, remembering their one glorious experience of jumping on it. I, however, am not sad. I spent the two years minutes that they were on it in paroxysms of fear that my dear sweet children were about to be paralyzed. So thank you Hurricane Kirksville that I no longer have to be the bad guy and come up with excuse after excuse as to why my kids can't go over there and jump.

So we survived the storm pretty well and I did learn that even after 48 hours of no power, I will still flip the light switch EVERY time I walk into my bathroom. I'm like a well-trained monkey.

Whimsy-ma-who?

I'm Janice, a thirty-uh-something year old wife and mother of the three cutest children on the planet and of the cutest tiny baby saint in heaven. I like to chat with my husband, Medman, listen to the stories told by my 8-year-old son, Dalton, die laughing at the humor of my 5-year-old girl, Belle, try to keep tabs on the 3-year-old, Liam, and try to stay home as much as possible. If being a homebody were quantifiable by some chemical in the body, mine would be off the charts. When left to my own devices I like to sew, paint, read and dream of the day when I have nothing but vast open hours to write.